The Magdalene laundries in Ireland, also known as Magdalene asylums, were institutions usually run by Roman Catholic orders, which operated from the 18th to the late 20th century. They were run ostensibly to house "fallen women", an estimated 30,000 of whom were confined in these institutions in Ireland. They functioned as penitentiary workhouses in which women did laundry for income for the religious orders who ran them.
In 1993, unmarked graves of 155 women were uncovered in the convent grounds of one of the laundries. This led to media revelations about the operations of the secretive institutions. A formal state apology was issued in 2014, and a compensation scheme for survivors was set up by the Irish Government, which by 2022 and after an extension of the scheme had paid out €32.8 million to 814 survivors. The religious orders which operated the laundries have rejected appeals, including from victims and Ireland's Justice Minister, to contribute financially to this programme.
History The Dublin Magdalen Asylum, sometimes called the Magdalen Asylum for Penitent Females, at 8 Lower Leeson Street was the first such institution in Ireland. It was run by the Church of Ireland and accepted only Protestant women. It was founded in 1765 by Lady Arabella Denny. In 1959 it moved to Eglinton Road, Donnybrook and in 1980 changed its name to Denny House. It closed in 1994 and was "Ireland's longest serving Mother and Baby Home."
Ireland's Catholic-run Magdalene asylums survived the longest, through to 1996. Ireland's Magdalene laundries were quietly supported by the state, and operated by religious communities for more than two hundred years. On laundries, James Smith asserts that the "Irish variety took on a distinct character".Smith xiv Inmates were required to work, primarily in laundries, since the facilities were self-supporting. Andrea Parrot and Nina Cummings wrote, "The cost of violence, oppression, and brutalization of women is enormous" and in their struggle to survive, the inmates suffered not only physically, but spiritually and emotionally.Parrot, Cummings 50
In Belfast the Church of Ireland-run Ulster Magdalene Asylum was founded in 1839 on Donegall Pass, and closed in 1916. Similar institutions were run in Belfast by Catholics on Ormeau Road, and by Presbyterians on Whitehall Parade.Government, politics and institutions in Belfast in the early twentieth century – National Archives of Ireland
Penitential regime Mary Magdalene, who the laundries drew inspiration from in their names, was a symbol for the institutions as the exemplar of both spiritual regeneration and repentance;Luddy, Maria (23 September 2009) . "Chapter 4: Prostitution and rescue work". Women and Philanthropy in Nineteenth-Century Ireland. New York: Cambridge University Press. pp. 97–148. . the symbol was analogous to laundries’ ostensible goal to “establish or make good each and every citizen's relationship with ‘their Creator’”. When entering most institutions, penitents were told to forget and not speak of their past and were assigned new names.Finnegan, Frances (8 April 2004) . ""Never Free from Their Espionage": The Good Shepherd Magdalen Asylums". Do Penance or Perish: Magdalen Asylums in Ireland (online ed.). New York: Oxford University Press. pp. 20–49. . In the religious-run laundries, women were often given names of saints, whilst in lay asylums such as the Leeson Street institution inmates were assigned numbers. The practice aimed to maintain the anonymity of the women admitted to the institutions, but historian Frances Finnegan points out that the assigned names also suppressed the individual identities of penitents. Labour in the laundries, despite contributing as an economic activity, was perceived as a means of spiritual improvement, and was described as a way for “the mind to be tranquillised [sic]”, purportedly having “made the penitents more amenable to religious instruction”.
The day-to-day life of inmates was managed under a penitential regime, which aimed to “bring penitents to God” by developing their virtuous habits. “The Rule of Silence,” which was enforced for several hours in a day, was a way of preventing “dissipation and dangerous conversations”, but Frances Finnegan argued also that the silence was implemented to maintain control and "quick discipline" of the penitents, especially in the laundries with greater numbers of penitents like the Good Shepherds. According to Finnegan, most women admitted "found the regime intolerable" as they were mandated to participate in "long hours of prayer and devotion", particularly incompatible with the educational background of a majority of the inmates.
In the institutions managed by the Sisters of Our Lady of Charity of Refuge, inmates were divided into three classes: the ordinary penitents, the Children of Mary, and the 'consecrated'—also referred to as “‘the class of perseverance’”; penitents were able to move up amongst these class levels "by demonstrating piety and discipline”. Those who reached the highest class, the ‘consecrated’, were expected to take a vow similar to that of the nuns, but were never allowed to become “‘real’ nuns” or be fully “integrated into the community”.
"Fallen women"
In the late 18th century, the term "fallen women" primarily referred to prostitutes, but by the end of the 19th century, Magdalene laundries were filled with many different kinds of women, including girls who were "not prostitutes at all", but rather "seduced women". Some of the "fallen women" had not willingly participated in sex (i.e., those who were victims of rape and/or incest), and some women and girls in the laundries were there not due to intercourse but rather because they were orphans, abused, deserted by their families, or did not conform to societal norms of the time. According to Frances Finnegan, author of Do Penance or Perish: A Study of Magdalen Asylums in Ireland, "Missionaries were required to approach prostitutes and distribute religious tracts, designed to be read in 'sober' moments and divert women from their vicious lives."^ Finnegan 15 Furthermore, "the consignment even of genuine prostitutes" to these laundries "seldom reduced their numbers on the streets, any more than did an individual prostitute's death," because, according to Finnegan, "so long as poverty continued, and the demand for public women remained, such losses were easily replaced."
Mary Raftery wrote that the institutions were failing to achieve their supposed objective: "the institutions had little impact on prostitution over the period," and yet they were continuing to multiply and expand due to their self-supporting free labour. Since they were not paid, Raftery asserted, "it seems clear that these girls were used as a ready source of free labour for these laundry businesses."Raftery 162.
Additionally, the state of Ireland and its government were heavily intertwined with religion. Finnegan wrote:
Finnegan wrote that based on historical records, the religious institutes had motivations other than simply wanting to curtail prostitution; these multiple motivations led to the multiplication of these facilities.^ Finnegan 10–11 According to Finnegan, as the motivations started to shift from a need to maintain social and moral order within the bounds of patriarchal structure to a desire to continue profiting from a free workforce, Magdalene laundries became a part of a large structure of suppression.
With the multiplication of these institutions and the subsequent and "dramatic rise" in the number of beds available within them, Finnegan wrote that the need to staff the laundries "became increasingly urgent." This urgency, Finnegan claims, resulted in a new definition of "fallen" women: one that was much less precise and was expanding to include any women who appeared to challenge traditional notions of Irish morality. She further asserted that this new definition resulted in even more suffering, "especially among those increasing numbers who were not prostitutes but unmarried mothers—forced to give up their babies as well as their lives."^ Finnegan 28^ Smith 42 And as this concept of "fallen" expanded, so did the facilities, in both physical size and role in society.
Some argue that women were branded as both a mother and a criminal if they happened to have a child out of wedlock. The choices the women at the time had were very limited. They had no social welfare system; therefore, many resorted to prostitution or entered these mother-and-child homes, also known as Magdalene laundries.Smith, James M, Ireland’s Magdalen Laundries and the Nation’s Architecture of Confinement, University of Notre Dame Press, 2007
Comparatively more is known about laundries in the 20th century due to detailed interviews with women who spent time in these institutions. In this later phase, the laundries lost their association with sex out of wedlock. None of Ireland's 20th-century laundries, except one, admitted pregnant women. Instead, women entered via the criminal justice system, reformatory schools, health and social services sector and self-admittance.
Expansion Several religious institutes established even more Irish laundries, reformatories and industrial schools, sometimes all together on the same plot of land, with the aim to "save the souls primarily of women and children".^ Raftery 18. Examples were Sisters of Our Lady of Charity of Refuge and the Congregation of the Sisters of Mercy, who ran the largest laundries in Dublin. These "large complexes" became a "massive interlocking system…carefully and painstakingly built up…over a number of decades"; and consequently, Magdalene laundries became part of Ireland's "larger system for the control of children and women" (Raftery 18). Both women and "bastard" children were "incarcerated for transgressing the narrow moral code of the time" and the same religious congregations managed the orphanages, reformatory schools and laundries.^ Raftery 19. Thus, these facilities "all helped sustain each other – girls from the reformatory and industrial schools often ended up working their entire lives in the Magdalen laundries".
Almost all the institutions were run by female religious congregations," i.e. sisters, and were scattered throughout the country "in prominent locations in towns and cities". In this way, according to Raftery, they were powerful and pervasive, able to effectively control the lives of women and children from "all classes".Raftery 284 This second incarnation of Magdalen laundries vastly differed from the first incarnation, due to their "longevity" and "their diverse community of female inmates, including hopeless cases, mental defectives…[and] transfers from industrial and reformatory schools".^ Smith xv, xvi These particular institutions intentionally shared "overriding characteristics, including a regime of prayer, silence, work in a laundry, and a preference for permanent inmates", which, as Smith notes, "contradicts the religious congregations' stated mission to protect, reform, and rehabilitate".
As this expansion was taking place and these laundries were becoming a part of a large network of institutions, the treatment of the girls was becoming increasingly violent and abusive. According to Finnegan and Smith, the asylums became "particularly cruel", "more secretive" in nature and "emphatically more punitive". Though these women had committed no crime and had never been put on trial, their indefinite incarceration was enforced by locked doors, iron gates and harsh sisters.Finnegan, Frances (8 April 2004). ""Never Free from Their Espionage": The Good Shepherd Magdalen Asylums". Do Penance or Perish: Magdalen Asylums in Ireland (online ed.). Oxford Academic (published 3 October 2011). . By 1920, according to Smith, Magdalen laundries had almost entirely abandoned claims of rehabilitation and instead, were "seamlessly incorporated into the state's architecture of containment".